The 2000s for me was an awkward period, but it's a period I enshrine because of what happened in it. I was in high school, it was my decade growing up as a teenager and boy what a ride that all was. The political field of the 2000s was rather bleak to many and most probably have wanted to forget it's existence. But when you were able to ignore it, there was in fact a lot of gems that came up in this period that are classics in their own merit. Here, I take you through my personal journey through some of those gems.



5. Wrestlemania XIX (2003)

What a time it was to have been a wrestling fan in the early 2000s. WWF at this time had to change it's name to WWE because of a copyright dispute with the World Wildlife Fund. The roster around in the 2000s had a lot of starpower to utilize and make for good PPVs. Wrestlemania XIX or 19, however you want to call it, was no exception.

This Wrestlemania was held on March 30th at Safeco Field in Seattle, home of the MLB Team, the Seattle Mariners. It had 10 matches on the card and quite a hell of a card it was. Matches involving HBK vs Y2J, Stone Cold vs the Rock III, Hulk Hogan vs Vince McMahon and Kurt Angle vs Brock Lesnar for the WWE Title.

Those matches I've just listed are in fact, the grand highlights of this Wrestlemania. The one match that stood out to me out of them all was Stone Cold vs the Rock III. These two huge representatives of the Attitude Era going at it, one more time. Neither of them had the championship going into this Wrestlemania and nobody would've guessed it was Austin's last match nor would the Rock triumph for once.



This match, to me personally, was the closing door to the Attitude Era. How could it not be? It had the two top stars from that era going at it. A hardcore wrestling fan can argue that Wrestlemania 17 was the moment the Attitude Era ended. I'll validate that argument by saying that it was probably the last event to highlight everything of what made the Attitude Era good. But here at Wrestlemania XIX, all it took was one match to finalize it.

I have this whole event on VHS, stashed away in storage, to keep for memory's sake. I did see it via PPV when it first aired and despite some of it's weaker moments in the event like HHH vs Booker T and that Brock Lesnar botch to Angle. WM XIX was a shining moment in the best of what WWE had to offer then. Again, hell of a time to have been a wrestling fan and I was one then.




4. Half Life 2 (2004)

When I look at Half-Life 2, I'm sent back into thinking of where gaming was in the 2000s. In the 2000s, gaming took off, especially PC gaming at that. HL2 was the groundbreaking benchmark that was the front of that rise in PC gaming. It took things to new levels and it was an incredible game on it's own.

HL2 really outshone it's predecessor in every way to the point where HL1 is practically forgettable. It showed that an FPS can have an intricate story among the brainless shooting action. Back then, most gamers were used to the idea of just shooting whatever for the action. Notable 2000s shooter games like Painkiller and Serious Sam were notorious for sending waves and waves of enemies at you to shoot down.



It was also through HL2 that we got the Source engine. It was a very fascinating engine that was used that gave a lot of life to other Valve titles that helped them redefine the genre too. Titles like Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Portal and later Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Other games used the engine too like Vampires The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Garry's Mod to name a couple.

HL2 was an impacting game that left it's mark on gaming history. Looked pretty, was fun, had a deep story and good music. At the time, I didn't play this game first hand, it wouldn't be until 2014, that I did and beat it. Quite fitting since it was 10 years after it was released.



3. Inuyasha (2000)

Inuyasha was my introduction into anime during the 2000s. I was already into anime beforehand, but haven't found any shows of interest for the then modern time. I was mostly into Tenchi Muyo! and other 90s classic anime shows. It was because of a close high school friend of mine that was into the show, that I became somewhat of a fan of this.



This was also a show that was probably a chore to watch, considering it had over 100+ episodes, 167 to be exact. Though that would be nothing when later shows like Naruto, Bleach and One Piece would come out later. Those were anime shows that spawned double, triple and quadruple the number Inuyasha did.

Inuyasha was also the show where it was partaken in the anime craze. It was like a fever that everyone had and felt like it was a part of everyone's lives. On came the weeaboos and the otaku in North America just planting themselves down and watching the latest episode of either Inuyasha or Naruto. I can't really say I missed that craze, it's a little toned down.

2. MySpace (2003)

Ahh, MySpace~ The pathway towards the social media movement that would overtake the internet by storm in just two years. Back at a time when Facebook would debut around the corner and be restricted to college students before things changed.

I will always regard MySpace as the most innovative social media platform over Facebook. Why? Because it had the most unique feature you can have for your profile. You can literally edit anything and everything on your profile! Want a different cursor? You can change that? Want background music? You can have that! Don't like the default buttons? You can change that!



All it would take is a bit of HTML coding knowledge and you could completely personalize your profile to reflect how you express yourself. That, to me, is the core attribute about social media done right. Tom was always your first friend and you could remove him if you didn't want him. Such is what I always did when I got better friends to replace him! Hah.

This site would undergo some awkward changes later in the years. A change in power, so to speak. It was no longer in Tom's hands, it would be in the hands of News Corp, then Justin Timberlake himself and recently, it's with Time Inc. Boy! Has MySpace lost ground when Facebook took off and how none of the owners after Tom, knew how to make MySpace relevant. Sadly, it has become a shell of it's former self. But to me, it was a staple experience of what social media was and should have been.




1. Windows XP (2001)

Where do I begin? This is the ultimate nostalgic piece of history for me and for others who loved this OS. While the machine I'm running on is Win 8.1 and wouldn't support XP in any way because of the hardware. Whenever I do acquire an old machine and it is able to, I will install Windows XP guaranteed.

I didn't even get to first experience XP until mid-way of my high school days. I mean, I did touch upon it in school and everything. But when it came to personal use, we were stuck with computers still running Windows 98 because we couldn't to just afford better machines and the OSes to install them on.



Everything I've ever done was through WinXP: Surfing MySpace, Roleplaying on MSN Chat, Using Yahoo!/MSN/AIM Messengers, Played a lot of PC games on it and many more activities. It was through WinXP, I cherished a lot of memories with and where most of my hobbies thrived in.

Windows XP was one of the only Windows OSes I knew how to properly maintain, besides Win98 since I was on that for so long. There was generally a lot you could do with WinXP and why it was an incredibly flexible OS that Microsoft had ever made. It began the 64-bit era that would later become the norm when computers gradually got more and more powerful and faster.



Because of having MS-DOS, running older games on a Windows XP machine was easy. The only limitation you had was the hardware you had to work with. You didn't even need DOSBox to emulate when all you could do, is download a DOS game from an abandonware site and run it like as if it was on it's compatible machine. Usually, that is.

WinXP was an incredibly compatible-friendly piece of software, a key feature Microsoft would neglect and not modernize into it's later OSes. The IPX protocol allowed you to play older games through that support. Games like Twisted Metal 2 for PC, Descent, Blood to name a few. When Microsoft decided during Vista, it would get rid of IPX and by the time Win7 came out, IPX was no longer a thing and forgotten about.



These days, the extended support for WinXP has long ended about 3 years after. Your only options if you're still an XP user is to upgrade, manually maintain or hop to the Linux bandwagon. Microsoft has long turned a cold shoulder to WinXP and encourages people to go to Win8 but now Win10.

I think it was rather irresponsible for Microsoft to practically not understand why it was with Windows XP that made it so good to us. Vista crapped all over the momentum Microsoft had going before it died a short death upon the arrival of Win7. Now Win7 is the new favorite OS where WinXP once was since Win8/8.1 has disappointed fans and Win10 isn't making a huge following.

While I will not have a primary machine running WinXP. I will always have a laptop or an older machine laying around running that OS. It is the penultimate piece of nostalgia for me that blossoms a trip into memory lane upon touching a single thought about it every time. There's a very good reason that it too, did the same for others who have experienced it and missed it when it was the main thing.

And there you have it, 5 nostalgic things from the 2000s I hold personally to heart that help me and probably you, remember. I could do 5 more things but I'm burned out right now, maybe more memories will drum up enough to make more! Thanks for reading.